Unconventional Conventional Warfare

It has dawned me recently that most of my wargaming choices are rather unconventional, in terms of actual game mechanisms. I've always been a fan of the simple beauty of Napoleon's Triumph, but I was reading a review on Board Game Geek recently which in no uncertain terms slated NT as a eurogame, instead of a 'Proper Wargame' (whatever that is).

That got me thinking: in terms of what is currently available within the world of war gaming, what can actually be considered conventional anymore? Napoleon's Triumph is a good example: only the most backwards of Grognards would say that it isn't a wargame altogether, but it does seem to stretch the definition of the word in some ways. An entirely deterministic system would seem to defy the alleged attempts of wargames to model the chaotic nature of combat, which is usually done by the addition of randomness within the model. Some would claim that the randomness is even necessary for the wargame to exist in the first place and that any system in which it is not present, by definition isn't a wargame.

Although I can understand these conclusions, I do not respect them. Every single wargame in existence is a necessary abstraction, created in order to model something that is very difficult to model at the scales that are considered in wargames. For example, what is the difference between abstracting one element of war (the element of chaos that is omitted in most wargames by the omission of 'fog of war' elements, while not allowing the abstraction of another system (the random nature of combat)? The former is a well-established element in many war games (although block games intentionally avoid this abstraction), while to many, the latter would be heresy, as seen by some of the back-lash against Napoleon's Triumph.

To me, such arguments feel more like attempts to cling to established tradition (dare I say, almost reactionary attempts). Any arguments claiming that the abstraction in one game is too much seems, to me, to not fully understand the nature of wargames as a whole: the entire hobby could not, and would not work without abstraction, and it becomes just a matter of how much you wish to abstract away. This is why I feel that Napoleon's Triumph is such a wonderful design: because the abstraction works well in terms of what the game is trying to represent, which is a high level simulation of the battle of Austerlitz.

For me, wargames have to provide the correct feeling. The breakdown of Corp structure as the battle progresses, the way that cavalry screen ride defiantly on the flanks of enemy Corps, the mad cavalry charges, the artillery bombardments, they all feel right. The ebb and flow of the battle is also beautifully captured in simple mechanisms. But enough gushing about Napoleon's Triumph, as there are many other examples I want to give.

One of the recent games I have played is Unconditional Surrender, which I had a first taste of last weekend. For numerous reasons, the design was something that I enjoyed immensely, but the game is very unconventional in many of its ways. The combat system is especially wonderful in this regard: instead of using force ratio, or roll to hit or any of the more traditional systems, it uses a system that I have seen put to good use before in We the People: 1d6 + a LOT of DRMs (yes, yes, We the People uses 2d6 but the system is similar enough). The system is very easy to use: to calculate DRMs you just go down a list so it is very difficult to miss something out.

What makes it stand out, however, is the complete lack of combat factor/maneuver points on all counters in the game. This seems to be a punch to the face of historicity, since all the armies present in the game are exactly the same, but in actual practice it makes the game work remarkably smoothly and some of the DRMs still allow the units to be sufficiently different from each other. What really works well within the game, however, is the way that mobile/assault combat works.

Mobile assaults allow you to keep moving and potentially attack an enemy more than once: this is especially useful when using tank units to punch through the enemy lines. Since in USE you activate the units one by one, this means that you can use that panzer to isolate an enemy unit which is then mopped up by your infantry. It is also possible to assault, which can only be done if you haven't used that unit to do a mobile attack and can only be done once per activation. You can then add multiple units to the assault.

The combat in USE has therefore a much more organic, flowing feeling in comparison to most other games. (when I say this, I am aware that systems such as OCS have a much better defined exploitation phase). If I see that my tank unit is managing to exploit successfully, I can immediately do something to widen the gap. Games that allow you to move and then attack (such as No Retreat, which is by no means a bad wargame), do allow you to Advance After Combat, but your ability to react to victories is more limited. As well as that, the Advance After Combat seems to be extra movement on top of the movement allowance, while in USE, it is an integral part of the movement allowance. Units that don't need to move up to the front before attacking can exploit a lot more than units attached to the frontline already, but this is not something that is modeled very well.

Another wargame I have enjoyed playing is Maria, which has a pretty crazy system for combat. The map in Maria is divided into squares which are assigned a card symbol: you have a hand of combat card which resemble cards from a standard playing deck. If you are fighting with an army, you have to use the suit that matches the area your army is in in order to help you win fights. This seems rather gamey, but it is a very distinctive way of modelling terrain, in a way. Sometimes you might need to retreat to a more defensible area, which no doubt happened during the real war of Austrian Succession, but it seems counter-intuitive in a way. It is difficult, even for me, to go past the abstraction in this case and see what the gameplay elements are trying to represent.

Lastly, one final game which is unconventional in every sense of the word is not a game, but a series: the COIN series to be exact. I won't go into much detail (I've already delved in depth about the games in my COIN and ADP reviews), but the way that the game tries to abstract the conflicts is also very innovative, attempting to add the actual events that happened during the various insurgency in a way that doesn't make the game predictable. Yet again, this is an attempt not to make the make the game historical, but to give the correct feel to the game, while still making it playable.

This, in the end, is the point of this particular article. Abstraction in wargames is omni-present and I feel that in terms of recent games, what is acceptable and unacceptable abstraction is a moot point for me now. The game shown above are all undoubtedly wargames, yet their main objective is to make the war FEEL right, no just play like history intended. In the end, it is important to note that wargames as a whole are completely a-historical or otherwise they would not be games at all: recreating a war by constraining so tightly to the events of the war paradoxically makes a game less of a simulation and more of a historical recreation.

This is not to say that historicity is unimportant or that games that attempt to be historical should not be produced, but I feel that sometimes the design space is constrained by attempts to make wargames of all types, no matter their design space, be historical with the stigma that if they aren't, then they are not truly wargames. I think in recent years the developments within the genre have shown that this is not necessarily true and I am truly excited about what the future will provide us and that, hopefully, it will provide games that cater to all kind of wargamers, without constraining what the genre can do.

Totaler Bonkers: A Totaler Krieg Review

So, first of all, a bit of a general update. My last review was a bit of a mess and it really drove away any desire to write long complex reviews of games for quite a while. I created it on a premise that just did not work and after writing thousands of words for it, I actually deleted it and almost started from scratch. I find I have an issue with writing something that I don't passionately care about. No game really came around that fired up my creative juices, but to get back into the spirit of it, I have decided to do a general review. Not something trying to make an overarching point through an overtly elaborate comparison between two games, but instead make a nice, straightforward review. Of two games. One which I haven't even played yet. Wait, shit. Something has gone wrong...

With that little intro over and done with, let me introduce to you a game that I have absolutely fallen in love with: Totaler Krieg. Now, I am not very experienced with Grand Strategy wargame: I have tried stuff like Here I Stand, which I can't really stand anymore (yeah I went there). I won't go into details why I dislike Here I Stand (it's the combat system), but regardless, I wasn't soured to the Grand Strategy experience: I just had to find the right game.

My experiences with World War II games are not really as extensive as some of you might think. For a long time it was limited to the various No Retreat, Red Winter (debatebly part of World War II), Combat Commander and Barbarossa to Berlin.  I had a small attempt at playing OCS and although I could see what a wonderful system it was, I couldn't get my head around it, although I have been meaning to give it a try (Reluctant Enemies looks interesting, for a start). In terms of WWII Grand Strategy though, I had only heard of the classics like the 3rd Reich system and that was pretty much it.

It was about this time that a few of my fellow wargaming goons let me know about Totaler Krieg. It sounded good but I had always felt that games like that were too big: too much to read, too much to keep track, even for a wargame. I did decide to give it a try and after having a brief look through the rules, I saw that the combat system was somewhat similar to the one present within No Retreat. After reading the rules, however, I still hadn't realised the true extent of how crazy this design really was.

The combat system in Totaler Krieg is pretty standard, although it has a few interesting points. It uses force ratios, much like No Retreat, with bonuses mostly being column shifts rather than DRMs. Some of the interesting points of it are that, in a city, you can stop your troops from retreating, although it means that your troops take additional damage. Retreat can also be stopped by using HQs, which are one of the more interesting parts of the game: they can project combat factors, meaning that they can support attacks or help defend even if they aren't on the frontline. They are, however, limited to one attack/defense per round, which means that you can sometimes do diversionary attacks to force your opponent to use his HQ before you do your main attack.

Another interesting point is that there are actually two combat impulses in the game: Blitz combat and operational combat. Blitz only occurs when a unit is blitz enabled, which requires a blitz token to be placed near the area where the unit is. Blitz tokens can also be placed in cities to force units to withdraw (although HQs will stop this retreat if they are used in the combat). I will explain how Blitz tokens are acquired later.

So far, so standard. Combat results usually determine how many spaces the enemy retreats, how many points worth of units they lose, etc. Anyone familiar with No Retreat should have no problem switching, although a few things will catch you out (like, for example, mud doing combat penalties for the attacker). The Zone of Control rules also lead to a very sticky game, especially in mud, in which you are not allowed to move out of EZOCs.

Another interesting part of the game is the way support units, like the air force, navy and convoys are handled. Instead of having a position on the board, the support phase involves attempting to place a support unit from your unified pool of tokens and then seeing if your opponent intercepts the placing or not: if they do, they are both rolled at the end of the turn to see how many turns it takes for them to come back (which is admittedly quite random).

Air units can be used to provide bonuses while attacking/defending, as well as doing the absolutely crucial task of removing potential avenues of retreat (the game has a brutal 'pick up all units you retreat through' system, which coupled with the 'destroy anything that is stacked in a hex over the limit', is an absolute killer). Naval units, on the other hand, are useful for cutting supply lines or even creating amphibious invasion (although this can only be done by air units). The system is a bit abstract (and doesn't feel QUITE right in the Pacific Theater of Operations game of the series, Dai Senso), but it's fast and relatively easy once you get your head around it.

Victory in Totaler Krieg is decided by a series of objective hexes and a tug-of-war Victory Point system. Objective hexes can either be soviet, axis or allied: controlling one of your own side doesn't give you VP, but it does prevent your opponents from getting it. It's a fairly standard system.

Now, you might wonder about the title and why I earlier referred the game as being crazy. From what I have said so far, the game sounds fairly standard for a WWII game. So what DOES make it stand out? That would be the diplomatic system, which is tied to the production system of the game. And this is where the craziness mixed with the sheer genius of the system comes in.

Totaler Krieg, really, is a deck management game disguised as a wargame. At the start of the game, each side receives a deck of card that decide not only diplomacy, not only production, but also random events AND historical offensives. The deck is divided into three phases: Pre-War, Limited War and Total War, with transition between one and the other decided by how the cards are played.

The cards are played on the first turn of each season (with all seasons, apart from summer, being two turn long). Which card you play, however, is decided in the previous season, which leads to a certain degree of risk-taking, especially with cards that require specific conditions on the board to be present. The cards themselves contain pre-conditions, how many steps you gain as replacements (either armour or infantry steps), one-off events, political events and conditional events.

Political events are how you can influence other countries and get them to your side and is the part of the game that leads me to say that Totaler Krieg is the first 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' wargame I have ever played. To understand why this is, it is necessary to understand that, in terms of diplomacy, ANYTHING can happen in Totaler Krieg. Do you want Poland to ally with Germany and attack the soviets before the allies? Sure, why not. Want to have Italy side with the Allies while Sweden and Norway side with the Axis? Again, possible.

Anything and everything can happen. The Republicans can even win in Spain. Or maybe they don't win, but the Basque country becomes a breakaway republic. Or maybe Poland gives in a cedes the Polish Corridor to the Germans. Or maybe Czechoslovakia doesn't give in to German demands.

This doesn't only extend to outside diplomacy, but also internal policy. As the Soviets, you can decide NOT to purge the army (although this forces you to face an red army mutiny later). Or maybe you want to construct the Stalin Wall and use it more extensively in your defence. Maybe you decide to be a Nice Guy Russia and go for a co-prosperity league rather than trying to gain land like Soviet Russia did historically.

As the Western Allies, you can decide to create not only the maginot line, but the Gimelin line as well. Or maybe you opt to modernise your army and make it more mobile instead. The amount of freedom given in the game means that games are NEVER gonna be the same, because all sort of crazy things could happen depending on dice rolls of political events and what cards are being played. This isn't JUST World War II, this is YOUR World War II, and every single time it is going to be completely different.

In effect, the game sets a stage for what the combat later in the game (where diplomacy is more limited) is going to be like. The differences in allies gained/lost can make a lot of difference. What if Italy remains neutral? What if Germany attacks Russia first? The game almost feels like it is in two phases: one where you set the scene and the other where you actually get to fight in the universe you created. It's a very incredible feeling, really.

This is what makes Totaler Krieg crazy, but it also makes it stand out. ETO games can get rather boring: you are always facing the same situation in the end. For Totaler Krieg, that couldn't be further from the truth.

There are some issues, however. For a start, sometimes you can play diplomacy cards that do absolutely nothing: maybe realistic, but rather boring and disappointing as well. As well as that, the rolls sometime tell you to roll on one table, which tells you to roll on another, which rolls on another and then just says 'nothing happens'. Funny, but frustrating and seemingly pointless at times.

The only major issue with the game, however, is the balance of some of the cards. This is kind of understandable: some of the options that could be chosen are historically worse than others. Unfortunately, some of the choices either limit your choices or are so obviously superior that the only reason why you would pick the other option would be for variety and attempting to try something different. For example, modernizing the French Army is almost always a bad choice, as well as choosing co-prosperity for the Soviets or not picking Fortress Europa (a card which changes the victory conditions so that the Axis can go on the defensive).

Another issue is that, at the start, your deck of cards is incredibly intimidating. You don't know what choices to make, what should be played when or what shouldn't be played if you want to remain competitive. This of course gets easier with more in-depth knowledge of the decks, but even I got caught out in my last game because of a card which outright knocked out the Italians out of the war for me. It is frustrating to get blind-sided by something that you didn't know was there in the first place.

Overall, though, Totaler Krieg is an incredible experience, although it takes a very long time to play. I played around 17 hours and I was still around 2 years away from the end of the war (going from 1937 to 1946). Fortunately, there is a pretty good Vassal module online. I wouldn't recommend buying the game, however, since here in England it costs around 100 pounds, which is an incredible amount of money for a single game. You also need a fairly large table, and an even larger one if you are planning to play Axis Empires (the combined Totaler Krieg/Dai Senso game). Overall, I would still strongly recommend trying it out if you get the chance, although be prepared to be confused by the rules at points.

You might be wondering what OTHER game I was referring to at the start of the game. The game in question is Unconditional Surrender, a new Grand Strategy game just recently released by GMT. There are many things within US that remind me of Totaler Krieg and having recently bought it (and clipped it), I might get a chance to give it a try soon. Reading the rules seemed to suggest a slightly easier to play version of TK, so I am very interested in giving it a go. Look out for a small AAR soon.

Overall, I really really like Totaler Krieg, but I don't know if the future will see me just playing US instead as a quicker, easier (and cheaper) game that packs the same emotions that are present within Totaler Krieg. Only time will tell, but in the meanwhile, Totaler Krieg is a solid 4 angry King Philips out of 5.

Demand: A Locomotive Werks/Automobile Review

The inspiration for this blog was me recently playing Locomotive Werks (Works? Warks? Whyrks?), a game that I have been meaning to play for quite a long time. As some of you might know, I am quite the fan of Automobile, a game that I am utterly terrible at but that I love to play again and again. There are many reasons why I like Automobile that I will go into as part of this dual review, but suffice to say  it's probably my favourite Wallace game out there (ranking above my other favourites, such as Perikles, Liberte and Brass). 

When people first told me of Locomotive Werks, all of my fellow economics game enthusiasts (I know at least 5, it must be a record!) all told me that it was a game fairly similar to Automobile. This sparked the initial interest that I had in the game. As well as that, since I am a 18XXer, I had a natural interest in trains, so Locomotive Werks seemed like something that I would enjoy playing. Even after playing the game, although I felt that the comparisons between the two games were relatively true, there were a few items that irked me and this is what made decide to write a review comparing the two. Although in terms of fundamental mechanisms the two games aren't as alike as some people might say, there were still points that I think were worth discussing, especially in terms of how the two games handle supply and demand, which is the topic of this particular article.

As a start, let's briefly explain the two games and why they are dissimilar to each other. Automobile is a game about building car factories, producing cars and then selling them! Locomotive Werks is a game about building locomotive factories, producing locomotives and then selling them! As I said, completely different themes and games. 

All kidding aside, let's first of all analyse Automobile in more depth. The game has a variable turn-order which is decided at the start of each round by the players picking a famous car tycoon from a bygone era (Ford, Howard etc). The car tycoons are in a set order and each have different ability, as well as providing different numbers of research cubes. Picking a tycoon is both a deliberation of what ability you want and your place in the turn order. There are advantages at being first (first pick of new factories, first to use distributors to sell cars), and there are advantages to being last (being able to see what other people are doing, getting the pick of the higher tech car factories).

After picking the turn order, each player can do a single action in each of three rounds (with the game being 4 turns in total), in which they can build factories, construct cars from factories, place distributors or even close factories. Once everyone has done their three actions, the players can sell cars, first using the special ability of Howard, then by distributors (which have a limited amount of slots that increases turn by turn) and then using demand tiles, which I will explain later. There are also executive actions which can influence how cars are sold.

The main part of the game involves the 'technology line', which shows different models of cars of three different types (budget, mid-range and luxury cars). Only a single player can build a specific model and to progress up the technology line you need to spend research cubes: 1 cube for going to the next step, 3 for skipping a step, 6 for skipping two steps, 10 for skipping three etc. The advantage of having higher tech cars is that they are always sold first during the selling phase. As well as that, older technologies can gain 'loss cubes' depending on how many models are active of the same type in front of them. Loss cubes lose the player money each round so they are something you want to avoid.

With the brief (and not very thorough) explanation above, let's now move on to Locomotive Werks. Locomotive Werks also possess a variable turn order, but instead it is decided by how much money you have, with the players with the most money going last. Unlike Automobile, being last is almost always bad and there aren't any real upsides, apart from maybe being able to access new technology. The way that the turn order is decided reminded me quite a lot powergrid, and the end-game can be reminiscent of it as well since you are in a constant struggle to make the turn order work in your favour.

Much like Automobile, Locomotive Werks also has a 'technology line'. Unlike Automobile, more than one player can produce a specific model. There are different types of trains as well, something that impacts how many factories are available for a given model and how high the demand is (with higher demand models having more factories available and vice-versa for low demand models). Building a new more advanced model immediately unlocks the next one in the chain, but since each factory costs progressively more money, the amount of funds you have becomes a limiting factor on how high the tech line you can advance.

Originally for this review I was going to post a long-winded explanation of how each game handled demand and production, but I soon realised that a) the explanation would not make a lot of sense and b) it would be extremely boring to read. The two parts above, however (the turn order and the technology line in each), are important, though, to understand the next points. 

The main point is that the demand in each game is handled in a very different way: in Automobile, the technology level matters because higher tech cars get preferential treatment when selling, but all cars, no matter the model, sell for the same. In Locomotive Werks, however, technology level only matters in terms of how much you are selling the locomotive for, with each different model having its own, separate demand.  Preferential treatment for selling is handled just by turn order, which is the crucial point of criticism that I have for Locomotive Werks: turn order plays almost TOO MUCH of an influence on how well you do turn by turn.

Another crucial difference is that in Automobile, you can usually guess a range of how many cars are likely to sell each turn: in Locomotive Werks, this is handled by rolling dice for each different model of locomotive. This can create huge swings in the game, where being later in the turn order means that you sell a fraction of what you can actually produce. This is especially notable in the end-game, where you have to play a balancing act of not having enough money to become last in the turn order, but have enough money to pass the money limit that triggers the end of the game.

It is also possible in Locomotive Werks to fall so behind the curve in terms of development that it is impossible to continue playing, since as technology advances within the game the demand for older models dries up. Contrast this to Automobile, where you only stand to lose money (and loans help you overcome this too) and can still play the game. Even if the possibility of being shut out of the game in Locomotive Werks is remote, the possibility is still there and there's no doubt that a less experienced player at some point found himself in this position, having to wait hours before his friends have finished playing what is actually a pretty lengthy game.

I think these are the fundamental points that make Automobile stand out as an exceptional game and make Locomotive Werks simply mediocre. Automobile allows you to guess at the demand and make plans based on these expectations: Locomotive Werks forces random demand on you that potentially you have no real way to deal with. In Automobile, there are advantages to being both first and last, and making this decision needs to be weighed carefully: in Locomotive Werks, the decision is a no-brainer: always be high in the turn order. Automobile, overall, just feels like a game in which the designer understood how to handle randomness, while Locomotive Werks just doesn't. Maybe in repeated plays, I may grow to like Locomotive Werks more than my initial impression, but for now, I would not hesitate to pick Automobile every single time. As well as that, I am a notorious wooden pieces fetishist and man, those little wooden cars from the Treefrog version just make my heart melt.

The scores are 5 out of 5 Angry King Philips for Automobile and 3 out of 5 for Locomotive Werks. Now only to see what the new outing from Wallace (ships) is going to be like...

My Shelf of Games

For anyone that doesn't check the SA thread, here are my boardgaming credentials in picture form:

The bottom shelf and the second from the bottom on the right are all wargames. This was the selection left to me after a lot of pruning and selling of stuff I didn't like (although there's some stuff that I still wish I could get rid of).

A Distant P(l)ain: A Story of Relationships

It's been a few months since my review of COIN games as a whole and I wanted to come back to one of those games because largely I had felt like I had really explored the full potential of the game and why I consider it the best COIN games currently available. As a warning, though, I will largely avoid talking about the historical veracity of the game because, frankly, I do not know enough about the conflict to adequately be able to assess how true to life the game is. What I will concentrate on, however, is how closely the elements of the game attempt to evoke their intended function: I will largely be approaching A Distant Plain (ADP) from a gaming perspective since my otherwise amateurish attempts at historical analysis would be otherwise rather insulting.

So, first of all, why do I consider ADP the best COIN game currently available? For a start, ADP provides the most interesting interactions between the factions in any COIN game to date. Although some of the factions present do not even represent a real, unified structure in real life, the sheer interactions that occur normally within a game of ADP more than make up for this. Since the frame-work of all COIN games are pretty much the same, it is therefore the factions that really make one game stand out from the other. 

When Andean Abyss first came out, it was already clear that it was the mix of the interactions which provided the main fun. The Government fighting the FARC with the help of the AUC, with the Cartel waiting on the side, biding their time. The eventual need for the Government to strike the AUC once it gets too powerful. The temporary alliances between the Government and FARC in order to take care of a troublesome Cartel player. These were all player-created events that really drove the game forward and allowed the players to interact with each other in novel ways. 

When Cuba Libre came out, I was originally worried that the factions were going to play too similarly to the ones in Andean Abyss (something which fortunately did not happen). On the other hand, when I first heard of ADP and saw the factions involved I wasn't immediately thrilled: for a start, I had much more of an interest in Castro's Insurgency than the war in Afghanistan. In the end, ADP became an impulse buy, since I hadn't originally intended to buy it at all. Once I got to play it, however, I was very glad to have made that decision.

So, how do the factions in ADP interact with each other? One of the most obvious interactions is, of course, the nominal alliance between the Government and the Coalition forces. This is an important interaction because I see it as the driving force of the entire game and this single interaction can largely colour the shape of the entire game. In most other COIN games, factions feel rather distinct for each other: the only other relationship in which two factions want to work largely in tandem is the Syndicate-Government relationship in Cuba Libre, but even that one quickly breaks down.

The Government-Coalition, on the other hand, are intrinsically linked with each other. The entire relationship centers around an unequal power balance in which usually Coalition will hold the advantage, but not overwhelmingly so. What really drives this relationship is the relative strength of will of one side or the other. Although largely all COIN games can be about attempting to brow-beat your opponents into aiding you, in no other game can the brow-beating be so effective as in a game of ADP. A strong Coalition player will always attempt to bend the Government to his will and attempt to dictate both the route and the tempo of COIN operations. It is therefore always important for the Coalition player to always insinuate that the actions that you are performing are for the good of both factions. Threats from the Coalition are usually along the lines of 'I'm gonna surge out if you do not do this' which can sometimes be effective.

The really interesting game, however, is when the Government player is the dominating one. In this situation, it is easy for the Coalition player to get exasperated and even have their troops held hostage with threats from the Government of withdrawing their ANA/ANP human shields.  Governing is usually the main way to piss off the Coalition, but bases prevent you from removing support for patronage, although this can be handily defeated by allowing a base to be undefended if the Coalition decided to keep their foot-print in the country too low.

I find the inter-play between these two factions endlessly fascinating. The relationship is an important point of consideration for both other players since the dynamic will largely decide who the main target for COIN operations is. 

It is therefore important for me to now describe what I consider the nominal alliances within the game. It is clear that the first (and more important one) is the one between the Government and the Coalition. Other important ones, however, are the relationship between the Taliban and the Government, the Coalition and the Warlords and the Taliban and the Warlords. Let's concentrate on the first one first.

I am not very familiar with cultural differences between the different ethnicities of Afghanistan, but I can't help but feel that the nominal alliance between the Government and Taliban is intended to portray the shared Pashtun heritage of both factions. One of the most important jobs for the Coalition is instilling within the mind of the Government that the Taliban is a major threat to the Government's aims: this however, could not be further from the truth. The Taliban and the Government have absolutely no reason to fight what-so-ever and largely can ignore each other: this is due mostly to the fact that the Taliban do not really care much about controlling regions (although they sometimes might want to in order to enact Sharia), while the Government does not really care about support/opposition beyond the ability to govern support away for patronage. 

One of the most effective tactics for the Taliban is to spread out as much as possible and cause terror: this will usually create a very low obstacle for the Government to gain control of regions where Taliban are present. It is therefore imperative for the Taliban player to constantly remind the Government player of this in order to prevent him from falling under the sway of the Coalition. A strong Taliban faction is also a handy way for the Government to keep a Coalition player in check, although this can potentially run the risk of depleting the resources of the Government rather fast. 

The second nominal alliance I mentioned was the one between the Coalition and the Warlords. This is usually not so much an alliance but more of an assurance that the two factions do not get into each other's way. The Coalition can be potentially highly damaging to the Warlords, while the Warlords can damage the Coalition by suborning away their protective meat-shields. There is, therefore, very little reason for either factions to fight each other: the rewards are too small and the risks too high. Much like the Taliban-Government relationship, a Coalition player can keep a strong Government in check by allowing the Warlords to operate freely. 

The last nominal alliance is between the two insurgent factions, the Warlords and the Taliban. This is much like the above relationship: neither of the two sides really want to get into each other's way. Taliban can actually be a boost to the Warlords since they help prevent COIN control (of course, Taliban control is just as bad but usually easier to deal with). 

These nominal alliances are what make the game striking and really make it stand out from the other two offerings in the COIN series. The strong nominal alliance between the Government and Coalition is itself split into nominal alliances to two completely different entities, which both the Government and Coalition can make use to strike each other since direct confrontation is so limited. This is why I rate ADP so highly, because this relationship is so unusual and different from any other that I have seen in any other game, war game or otherwise. It even, for my limited knowledge, smacks true to real life, with the Coalition despairing over a Government that just doesn't seem to want to toe the line.

Although I wanted to make the inter-faction relationships the focus of this review, there are a few other pieces that I have picked up while playing the game. First of all, how the Taliban factions differs from the other major insurgent factions (the FARC, the 26 July Movement) in other COIN games. What is different about the Taliban is the ease that they can move around the board, as long as they stay in Pashtun areas. In Pashtun areas, they can remain undetected, move around quickly, recruit even in areas with support. It means that largely the Taliban are almost impossible to eradicate even if support has been created, something that doesn't happen within the other COIN games. That, along with the presence of Pakistan within the game, really changes how the faction functions in comparison to other major insurgent factions (something that I wrongly claimed in my original COIN review).

The other interesting faction within the game is the Warlords. The Warlords have always felt slightly a-historical to me (although really, the Taliban are hardly a unified faction either). I have grown to appreciate, however, the attempts by the creators of the game to make them feel like they actually are a loose conglomeration of different warlords/groups. For a start, the victory condition of the faction is perfect: making sure that no one really controls Afghanistan is a perfect way to represent the fact that the faction is not perfectly unified. There are other elements present which also support this, chief among them the road-protection that the Warlord provide. Overall, they do manage to portray the growing non-Pashtun opposition to the Government and I think the isn't really a way to portray that without forcing the Warlord player to be too schizophrenic in their actions.

ADP, no matter how accurately it portrays the conflict or not, really managed to create an unprecedented level of interaction and such a unique player relationship that I find it hard that something will be able to replicate this again. I am, however, looking forward to Fire in the Lake, since I am highly curious at how a COIN games with two distinct sides will unfold. As it stands, though, ADP is the current gem of the COIN games, surpassing the slightly unpolished Andean Abyss and the fun but slightly random Cuba Libre. I hope to get many more tries at playing this wonderful game and the game rightly received 5 angry scowling King Phillips out of 5.

The Impossible Games: The COIN Series

I'm not going to explain the title right off the bat, since I do want speculation to build up as you read the reviews of the three games (and one on the horizon) that currently make up the COIN series of 'war games'. It could be a variety of different reasons: maybe they are hard to play, maybe they have unclear rules, maybe they are just a bit too long! As per usual, I won't explain myself until the very last paragraph, but no cheating! I don't want you to skip ahead just in order to see what I'm driving towards: just a bit of patience and it will all come clear. With that in mind, let us proceed with the review!

Before I truly begin, one thing needs to be kept in mind when dealing with these games: unlike most wargames, the COIN games deal with conflicts that are likely to have been lived through by a large part of the population, especially for the insurgency in Afghanistan and Colombia. The subject matter also is filled with breaches of human rights and indeed these breaches of human rights are mechanisms within the games themselves (through the use of Terror operations to sway popular opinion). As such, many people will rightly find these games problematic. Having had friends go to Afghanistan as part of the coalition forces, I found that particular game problematic and it was a real worry for me that the games would be careless or reckless in the way that it portrayed these rightfully very emotional conflicts. I was happy to see that all of them had a degree of tact when dealing with the conflicts and this is the reason why I don't have issues playing them, but I fully understand why some people might. I would thus be honoured to hear the opinions of anyone that finds the games too objectionable to play, just to hear their views on these controversial subjects.

The COIN series of games is a series made primarily by Volko Ruhnke in collaboration with other designers (Jeff Grossman in the case of Cuba Libre and Brian Train for A Distant Plain). Volko previously designed fairly standard, although interesting, card-driven games: the standard yet tactically interesting Wilderness War, which uses a fairly standard CDG base as its main mechanism, although it does add interesting elements in the way in which the seasons and terrain is used within the context of the French-Indian War: the design is very evocative of how the major avenues of invasion for both sides (mostly the rivers of the region).

The other design by Volko is the rather controversial Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-?. I won't go in-depth on the reasons why I found this game deeply flawed, both in terms of the political aspects that it tried to portray as well as the mechanisms present in the game, but here are a few points that stood out to me in terms of game design.

One thing that will tie in with my reviews of the COIN series games is how Labyrinth attempts to portray the asymmetrical aspect of warfare in the context of the war on terror. The basis of it is that the terrorists need to roll dice in order to perform pretty much anything within the game, while the Americans only need to roll dice when attempting to stabilize governments. This is problematic in game terms for a couple of reasons: as the terrorists, rolling for even the most mundane tasks means that you can feel like you have wasted entire turns. There are ways to mitigate the luck but since there are so many dice involved throughout the game, the potential for feeling like you have been given a bad hand due to unlucky dice is ever-present (in a game where deck-luck is already a major problem, as befits a game that takes its cues from Twilight Struggle).

Even for the American side, the situation is not ideal, since although most things can be done without a dice roll, the only action that pushes you towards victory is handled by dice rolls. No matter how good your setup is, the dice can still screw you and then you are forced to do exactly the same thing next turn. This is unlike Twilight Struggle, where if you screw up a coup or realignment, there's always the possibility of attempting to find your points elsewhere.

With the above in mind, you would think that any games based on a similar system would inherently suffer from the same problems, but it is clear that after Labyrinth was published, Volko Ruhnke made a deep analysis of what elements of his game he wanted to keep and what he wanted to do away with. Some of the most troubling aspects of Labyrinth were thus removed: although both insurgents and conventional forces would act differently, the excessive dice rolls had to be removed. Some things would be kept, though: especially the active/underground system for guerrillas, that models the difficulty in finding insurgents unless they poke their head up.

One more important change had to be made and I feel it was likely done in order to create a game that would handle more than 2 players.

Now, there are some CDGs out there that already handle more than two players, with Here I Stand and Virgin Queen being at the forefront, but for me those designs never really had the appeal that Twilight Struggle had. Both HIS and VQ do not have enemy events firing if you play a card for ops: this is both a fallback on the original mechanisms for CDGs (For the People and We the People used a similar deck mechanisms) but as well as that, they create less of a headache when a particular event could affect more than one faction. In Twilight Struggle, any enemy event will directly harm you while providing a bonus for your enemy: in a 4-player game, an enemy event could cripple a third player and not affect the player that allowed the event to fire, obviously something that is less than ideal.

So how do you combine a 4 player + experience with the event mechanism of Twilight Struggle? Well, the answer for Ruhnke was to create a completely new system! The system that Ruhnke designed is, if you'll excuse the pun, quite revolutionary.

Instead of each player having a hand of cards, the cards are played in the deck one by one, with the players being able to see the current card and the next one. The order of play is shown on each card using an initiative track, but only two players can play each card. The first eligible player gets a choice to either play the event (with most events being 'double-sided' and thus having a negative or positive effect for a particular faction), or play the cards for operations in as many areas as he wants, either with or without a special action.

Once the first player has made his choice, the second eligible player gets the choice to play the card, with his actions limited by the choices of the first eligible player: if the first player played the event, the second player can play the card for unlimited operations and a special order. If the first player chose to do operation with special orders, the second player can either fire the event or play for operations in a single area, while onn the other hand, if the first player did not play a special order, the second player can only play the card for a limited operation only. Players can also decide to pass (and the reason for doing this will become clear).

The system above is interesting because it allows the first player to block the event if he thinks it will harm him excessively. it also allows him to negotiate with the second eligible player to fire an event that is potentially beneficial to both: this really increases the potential for negotiations and double-dealing within the game.

There appear to be a couple of flaws to this system, however. For a start, luck of the draw seems to be a big factor, with whoever is first having a notable advantage over everyone else. This is handily fixed by another rule: if a player plays on a card, he is not eligible to play on the next card. This leads to interesting cases in which there are two cards, one after the other, that could potentially be good/bad for you: having to decide which you want to play (and which you want to potentially block) is an interesting situation.

The other issue is that being first appears to be explicitly better than being second: this is handily fixed by the fact that each faction has to spend resources for every single area in which they have an operation, thus limiting the number of operations you can do. Skipping, of course, adds additional resources (as well as propaganda cards, explained later), which means that you never get into a situation in which you can never play a card, although obviously it is still a less-than-ideal situation.

The most interesting factor of all the COIN games is the fact that each game features 4 factions that all play completely differently from each other. Although this is present within VQ and HIS as well, COIN goes further. In those two games, usually most sides will have a similar menu of actions, with additional special actions given to certain factions. On the other hand, COIN games both distinguish between COIN forces (which field conventional troops/police) and insurgent factions (which are composed of guerrillas). Analysing deeper, even individual insurgent/COIN factions act in very different ways from each other, with operations being (usually) the same while each faction has its own special orders.

The different factions, as well as acting differently and providing different playing styles, also have vastly different winning conditions. For some factions it might be to build bases, for some to create popular support/opposition to the government, while others just wish to make money. In many cases, the winning conditions are not mutually exclusive, which leads to interesting interactions since your winning condition might be (directly or indirectly) related to someone else's winning condition.

Winning conditions don't automatically win you the game, however. Winning is only assessed when a propaganda card is played. Although this does allow players to prevent someone from winning even if they surpassed their winning condition, it does lead to strange situations in which you can do unstoppable plays on the very last card: this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that propaganda cards are meant to be distributed evenly within the deck, so players know when to expect one, but it still leads to weird last-card plays. Rules are usually in place, however, to restrict the actions on the very last propaganda card, or otherwise the game would be excessively swingy (for a game that is already pretty swingy).

As well as providing a sudden-death victory check, propaganda cards are also used to provide resources to all of the factions (with each faction usually having different ways in which they can  gather resources), as well as providing a convenient 'tidy-up' phase.

The events within the different games tend to be very powerful, although this is truer within Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain in comparison to the first outing of the series, Andean Abyss. As well as regular events, there are also momentum events (which last until the next propaganda) or capabilities, which last until the end of the game (and are pretty much necessary in order to win as certain factions).

Having gone through the common mechanisms in each game, what does each individual game have to offer? Andean Abyss is the first game in the series and centers around the marxist insurgency between the government and FARC militia in the 1990s. I have no great knowledge of this particular conflict so I won't attempt to analyse if the game is true to the conflict, but it does seem to provide a well-researched, even-handed approach to the conflict, although it does not in any way attempt to recreate a completely accurate, historical simulation of the insurgency.

The game does pose some hard choices, however, especially when it comes to the question of the government collaborating with the AUC (the anti-marxist, right-wing terror group). As the government, the AUC are useful to keep the FARC in check, but eventually they have to be dealt with as well, lest they become too powerful. I don't know if this accurately reflects what happened in real life or not, but it certainly creates a powerful faction dynamic. I also have second-hand reports from Colombians that stated they thought the game portrayed the conflict correctly, but since I don't have first-hand accounts of this I can't account for their veracity.

All in all, Andean Abyss is an amazing game, although it has a few issues. The government and FARC factions are very difficult to play, with the former being difficult because it is almost impossible to win using it without reading the strategy tips present in the AA playbook, while the latter just feels like an up-hill struggle. The aim of the government is keeping everyone in check and playing capabilities so that before the last propaganda card they can overpower everyone for the victory, while FARC usually aims to cripple the government economically. Another issue with AA is that many of the events are just not worth firing (although this is largely fixed in Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain).

Cuba Libre is based on Castro’s Cuban Insurgency during the late 50s. When I first heard of this game, the one thing that worries me the most was that it was going to be too similar to Andean Abyss: there would be the government, the marxist militia, the money faction and a control faction against the marxists. Fortunately, the game proved to be anything but a simple copy of AA, Although there are similarities between the marxist and government factions between the two games, the similarities end there.

The Government in Cuba Libre feels like they are fighting a losing battle: getting support is hard, their alliance with the US is eroding (which makes all their operations cost progressively more) and there are plenty of enemies that want to destroy them. Unlike in AA, the government in CL wants to aim for the quick win: crushing the uprising before it can even have a chance to spiral out of control. The government has no capabilities within CL and thus their ability to deal with insurgents just gets worse and worse over time as they run out of the few resources they have.

The Marxist faction in CL, the 26 July Movement, has similar aims to FARC in AA but has much higher popular support, which means that they can rally insurgents to their cause surprisingly easily. On the other hand, it is harder for the 26 July faction to receive resources, thus making it still a challenge to win.

The other two factions are Directorio Revolucionario, which act as a separate insurgency to Castro's one, something that causes it to clash with both the government and Castro's forces. The most interesting faction in the game is, however, the Syndicate, which is like the Cartel but acts in a completely different way. While the Cartel in AA is nominally allied to the FARC faction, in Cuba Libre the Syndicate is more closely aligned with the government, since they can only expand their casinos where either they or the government have control.

On the other hand, for each area controlled by another faction in which they have a casino, the Syndicate has to pay the controlling faction resources as part of the 'skim'. It leads to an interesting symbiotic relationship between the government and the syndicate, in which neither wants to deal the first blow against the other although they both know that ultimately they will have to.

Overall I enjoyed Cuba Libre more than Andean Abyss: it is a tighter, quicker game that has more interesting faction dynamics when compared to Andean Abyss.

A Distant Plain is the third game in the series and centers around the Afghan insurgency during the 2000s. As I've stated before, I had misgivings about this design, both due to personal reasons and the fact that I thought Labyrinth had handled the conflict badly previously, without the same level of care that both Cuba Libre and Andean Abyss seemed of have. When I actually managed to get a game of it, however, I was blown away. This wasn't necessarily due to how the conflict was handled (there are some cards in the game which seem to be less than tactful, although nothing that really stands out as out-and-out bad), but simply due to how playable the game was.

A Distant Plain provides a very different experience when compared to the other games in the series. Instead of having a single COIN faction, there are now two, nominally allied to each other, although each with very different aims and objectives. While the role of the government is still present, ADP also has a coalition faction: they don't have resources themselves (representing the near-limitless resource of the USA), but if they use government forces as part of their action, they have to spend government resource. Another interesting dynamic of the coalition is that their victory condition is having support (something that strangely the government does not need) as well as having the fewest troops on the board as possible while still keeping up the support. For every piece that they have off the board, they gain an additional victory point: this naturally leads to the coalition to surge troops in, create support and then attempting to surge out, which is not an easy task.

The government largely only cares about patronage, which would be described as systematic corruption in the west but really represents the government giving hand-outs to supporters in order to be able to maintain power (something that without these payments they would unlikely to be able to keep). It does sort of tie in with how tribes/ethnicity plays an important role in Afghanistan,

The next faction is of course the Taliban, which is the main insurgent faction in the game. The Taliban faces a number of a challenges: the fact that they are facing both the government and coalition means that they can be found and destroyed easily if the two factions combine together to perform a 1-2 punch. On the other hand, the Taliban can move freely within areas of Pashtun ethnicity as well as create bases of operation in Pakistan from which they can build up their forces and then attack. Overall, however, the Taliban aren't very much different from the other main insurgent factions in the other games.

The last faction is the Warlords, which is where the game starts to break from its adherence with reality. The warlords are represented as a united faction, but really they are a hodgepodge of local bandits, ex-northern alliance members and various other factions, some of which are anti-Taliban, some of which are anti-government. They are similar to other green factions in that they can grow poppy fields, but their victory condition is not only based in gaining money in order to win (since in AA and CL the secondary winning condition, gaining bases, is tied to the profit-making). Instead, they just want to ensure that the provinces of Afghanistan are not controlled by any other faction (which seems to account partially for the fact that it's not a unified faction, although still feels faintly gamey in places).

Overall, A Distant Plain provides a truly different feel and just in terms of playability, it stands as the top offering currently available within the series. This is only surpassed by the next volume, Fire in the Lake, which is based on the Vietnam War and thus features conventional troops and irregulars on both sides (something that I am looking forward trying).

So these are the three games in all of their glory. If I had to give out that truly stood out to me, it would be A Distant Plain simply due to the relationship between the coalition and government: it created such a natural unease mixed with a need to rely of each other I hadn't felt in many other games. I have gone through some of the issues with the game during the review itself, but the biggest problem that I have is that I simply cannot play the game enough, mostly because it is impossible to find people to play it. The game sits dangerously close to the boundary between regular games and wargames: finding one wargame interested in it is easy, but finding 3 others? Almost impossible. Hence the title. I have only managed to play each game in the series once and trying to find other players is truly like pulling teeth. Still, the games are wonderfully playable, although at times they suffer from luck of the draw (especially if suddenly an event appears which disproportionally helps a player right at the end of the game, which has happened to me). Overall I can't help to recommend them and if I had to give a rating to the series as a whole, I would give them 4 out of 5 angry scowling King Philips. The review ends here, but please excuse me while I write a trap paragraph to catch anyone skipping to the end of the review.

The reason why the games are called impossible games is that you are a cheating bastard that can't follow goddamn instructions even when I try to clearly give directions on how the review should be read! Shame on you for skipping right to the end just because you were curious! Aren't you interested in my analysis of the games? Are you just that curious? Shame on you! Now go back and read everything like you are meant to! Zero out of five angry scowling King Phillips for you!

Guns of Gettysburg

You might not know it if you haven't been a regular in the board game thread within the Something Awful forums, but I love reading history. My main focus of study is the 19th century and, more precisely, the American Civil War: this is one of the large reasons why I have an avatar of General Burnside with the caption "So dreamy..." (well, that and a personal joke about me having a fetish for people with sideburns, don't ask). Having been born in Italy and living in England, it might be difficult to understand why I would have an interest in the ACW, but reaching back into the furthest reaches of my memory, I think it had something to do with playing an old Amiga game called North &  South, which had delightful cartoon Northern and Southern armies, along with having a boat-load of ACW playmobil toys. I don't understand how those toys had any kind of market within northern Italy, but there you go.

I was a teenager by the time I got a chance to watch such old war classics such as Waterloo and Gettysburg: I don't really want to discuss the merits of those particular films but they did strike a chord with me. By now, I've read countless books: although I don't really dip my toes in the Napoleonic era too much, the exploits of 19th Century America are still of a great interest to me.

Guns of Gettysburg is a game that I've been waiting for ever since I heard and began playing Napoleon's Triumph. Napoleon's Triumph, as you might know, is probably one of my favourite games ever, combining some of the elements of Euros and wargames in quite a unique mixture. The levels of bluffing, maneuvering, attacking and counter-attacking make NT one of the all-time great games for me and the only that annoys me about it is that I just can't seem to play it enough. So, quite naturally, when I first heard that Bowen Simmons was making a game similar to Napoleon's Triumph but based on the battle of Gettysburg, I couldn't help but feel excited.

Unfortunately, Guns of Gettysburg was a long time coming. The game got delayed and although I was disappointed at the prospect of never playing it, there was always a part of me that hoped it would finally come out. At the start of 2013, as the Something Awful thread posted about which games they eagerly awaited for 2013, I half-jokingly mentioned Guns of Gettysburg. This was, surprisingly, only a couple of weeks before the kickstarter got announced. Reading about the kickstarter starting was an unexpected joy.

For many reasons, both financial and personal, I did not join the kickstarter: for a start, US kickstarters tend to be very, very expensive for UK residents (the only one I've shelled out for is the one for 18OE, and that's only because I believed that the game itself would never hit retail). The wait until the game hit the retailer was excruciating, but finally my favourite online retailer finally had it in stock (I even managed to make him reserve a copy for me). I bought it as soon as it was available and within the week it was within my hands. I couldn't wait to get it on the table and so the badgering of anyone with even a remote interesting in wargaming began.

The first hurdle was placing the stickers on each of the blocks: unlike Napoleon's Triumph, each block in Guns of Gettysburg is more or less unique and as such, it has its own sticker. The entire army, replacements and all, had to be stickered, something that took me at least an hour of careful application. Fortunately, a spare sticker sheet had been handily provided in case I screwed something up: with my butter-fingers, this inevitably happened.

Another difference from Napoleon's Triumph was the size of the box and the size of the board. The NT map is a gargantuan affair, while the Guns of Gettysburg box and map are relatively smaller (although the map will still take an ample part of a table).

The layout of the rules was immediately familiar for anyone with knowledge of NT, but for the first time in a long time, some of the rules and sentences did not make immediate sense to me. It is unfortunate to say that there were more than a few occasions when, after reading a sentence, I immediately thought "wait, what the hell does that even mean?" and had to re-read the sentence in question several times before I finally understood what it was attempting to say. Overall, however, the game seemed slightly easier than NT, with only some of the concepts (organisational requirements and multi-hour turns, to name a few) that seemed difficult to understand. I felt confident that I could teach this game to another even if he hadn't read the rules.

This, it was clear, was a bit foolish on my part. Although I think I've got most of the rules right now, there were several rules that I completely forgot about in my first few plays, all of which were pretty critical to the flow of the game. Guns of Gettysburg, however easier in comparison to NT, is still a difficult, complex game with many rules that are easier to miss during the course of the game.

Exploring the comparison with NT further, there are many changes within the game that distances both the aesthetics and gameplay from its predecessor. For a start, as beautiful as the NT map is, one of the main concerns I heard from people that played the game was that it was very difficult to read the various attack penalties printed on the board. For me personally, it was almost impossible for me to read the locale unit limits due to my poor eyesight.

Guns of Gettysburg fixes a lot of this by forcing blocks to always be on approach (as befits the 'long line' fighting of the Civil War as compared to the Napoleonic-style of congregating units in big corps), terming them to be 'positions'. Positions can hold up to three blocks and the relative facing of a block is determined by where the block is relative to the dividing line. Another much needed innovation is that the terrain effects that affect that position are now in front of the block, making it immediately possible at a glance to determine what terrain will affect a particular fight.

The most notable difference between the two games is that Guns of Gettysburg blocks all start at strength two (with only Union cavalry being strength one). Guns of Gettysburg blocks, however, are assigned to different divisions/corps, some of which are qualitatively better than others. The way this is reproduced is by how blocks are reduced when they take casualties.

Instead of going straight from two-strength to one-strength, the owner of a block that needs to take a reduction picks up two replacement blocks with the same division/corps name as the one taking the reduction and then lets the other player randomly decide between them. Replacement blocks can either be reduced two-strength or reduced one-strength, with specific corps/divisions having more reduced two-strength replacements and thus being more likely to go to reduced two-strength rather than reduced one-strength. Reduced two-strength blocks, however, always reduce to reduced one-strength, while the latter blocks are always eliminated. The above might sound confusing but in effect is not too difficult to understand once you get to grips with it.

From a designer standpoint, the above rules is present for two reasons: one, it allows different blocks to be qualitatively better, as stated before and two, it allows for an element of fog of war that would otherwise not be present in the game. Within NT, this is done by the starting setup and different starting strengths: within Guns of Gettysburg, the chaos of the battle will mean that eventually you will be unable to determine if what you are facing is weak one-strength units or fresh two-strength ones.

Movement within the game is limited to moving from one position to another, although changing facing can be done without counting towards the movement limit. One of the main differences is that units exert a field of fire: it is not possible to go through a field of fire unless attacking and it's not possible to exit an enemy field of fire unless withdrawing (which in this game is a separate move  action from regular marches).

The main difference between the two games, however, is the combat system and this is where another element comes in: battle tokens. In order to represent artillery within the battlefield, Guns of Gettysburg makes the use of battle tokens which are played when an attack is declared in order to either help bombard the defenders or provide defensive artillery fire. Placement of tokens is limited by the aforementioned organisational requirements: usually you have to match specific tokens to specific divisions/corps, which means that it's important to make blocks from the same division/corps stick next to each other.

From a design prospective, this is actually quite an elegant rule: it forces your units to stick organizationally together in an organic way, without forcing you to explicitly keep them together. There are no rules that mean that you have to keep the blocks near each other, but if you split them apart in an emergency, you aren't able to make use of their artillery tokens, making them less effective than if they had stayed together.

The combat system is one of the major ways in which the game has been overhauled. After declaring an attack, the defender places his battle tokens face down in positions that have a field of fire. After he's done, the attacker places his tokens, with every three cannon symbols knocking out an enemy artillery token. After the attacker is done, any remaining defensive artillery causes one reduction per three cannon symbols in the defense, with ridges potentially providing more.

Once the artillery phase is over, the leading units for the attack/defense are shown and various modifiers are given to find an end result (much like NT). Some of the modifiers are things like fighting on a steep position, or flanking threats or even, for the confederates, a +1 for simply attacking. A result of 1 or above is a victory for the attackers. If the result was at or below -2, only the attacker takes a reduction, between -1 and +1, both sides take a reduction, while on +2 only the defender takes a reduction. Attackers that lose are forced to retreat immediately, while defenders have to perform a mandatory retreat during their own turn.

Another element that I have not discussed before and which relates to withdrawals is General Orders. Within NT, command and control is modeled through the use of a limited number of actions for corps/independent units, with the Allies having less options than Napoleon's army. Within Guns of Gettysburg, the command and control system does not limit the number of blocks you can move, but limits HOW you can move them. At the end of your turn, you can give one of three General Orders for your next turn: attack, hold or withdraw. You can only attack during attack General Orders and likewise, you can only withdraw during Withdraw General Orders.

This means that there is always a level of uncertainty, since a position that you thought was tenable could suddenly collapse and since you didn't give the correct order last turn, there's no way you can protect it! Fore planning and ability to spot trouble before it happens is very important in this game, especially since units cannot move unless they withdraw/attack if they are within the field of fire of an enemy.

One of the most difficult aspects of the game is multi-hour turns, which also tie in on how reinforcement works. Bowen Simmons, rather than give a 100% historically accurate reproduction of a battle, has stated several times in the past that he prefers to give the players the essence of the battle, the reason why the battle is different/important/interesting. For Austerlitz, this was the importance of the French reinforcements and the uncertainty of where the Allied attack was coming from.. For Marengo, this was the initial bottle-neck followed by the open battle.

For Guns of Gettysburg, the main essence of the battle is uncertainty. Neither side knew where exactly the enemy was, or how far they were away, or how soon their own reinforcements were going to come. Neither sides had even planned to fight at Gettysburg in the first place! This uncertainty is reproduced in the game through the use of double-blind reinforcement schedules: each hour, you draw a reinforcement token which tells you both if you get a reinforcement or not and from which road the reinforcements come if you do. Reinforcements can either come in off-road (in which case you bring them in next to the board edge all at once) or on-road, which allows a block to move up a road as many spaces as it wants as long as it doesn't enter an enemy field of fire. The latter, however, is limited to one block per hour.

This, however, causes an issue: lets say that the Confederates get lucky and get lots of reinforcement early on while the Union player barely gets any. If the objectives were in a fixed placed, this would undoubtedly make the job of the Confederate easier. However, if the situation was reversed and the Union player had lots of reinforcements, then it would be almost impossible for the Army of Northern Virginia to win. These sort of imbalances are prevented by allowing the union player to move the objective markers if he gets less reinforcements than the Confederate player, making it possible to keep the game more or less balanced even in extreme situations. The game is won when the Confederate player controls an objective and the Union player cannot attack anymore (either due to night starting or the union player running out of battle tokens, since at least one has to be used in order to be able to attack). If the Union player manages to last three days without the above occurring, then he wins.

Since turns in Guns of Gettysburg are still hour-long, this might suggest that games would ordinarily last THREE TIMES as long as NT, but this largely is not the case (although generally games still last longer than NT games). This is due to the aforementioned multi-hour turns, which can be called if neither player has called an attack general order in the previous turn. Multi-hour turns allow for increased movement and allow you to draw additional reinforcement tokens and this section alone accounts for a large degree of complexity within the system: it's necessary to track when a reinforcement appears in order to determine how much further it can march etc. Still, multi-hour turns do seem to do their job in speeding up the gameplay considerably.

So, in general, how does Guns of Gettysburg stack up to Napoleon's Triumph? It is clear, from the start, that there is one critical element that distances the two games. While Napoleon's Triumph is noted for its complete lack of random elements, Guns of Gettysburg brings to the table not one, but three distinct randomization mechanisms: reinforcements schedules, battle tokens and reduction system. For that alone, it is clear that die-hard fans of NT might be slightly dissapointed when approaching Guns of Gettysburg, but even taking that in consideration, the randomness of the game is far lower than most other wargames.

As well as that, some of the randomization allows the game to have a much higher replay-ability factor. Although it is possible to play with the historical reinforcement schedule, the fact that the schedule is different from game to game leads to remarkably different games: one game, the Confederates might have their back against the wall while in another, the Union could be pushed back almost immediately. The only thing that made games of NT different was how the Allied player dealt with his initial setup.

Some other issues with the game center around the relative immobility of units: there are penalties in calling a withdrawal which can lead to units staying static in a position until they finally attack (something which is especially true for the Confederate player). Due to defensive fire causing reductions (while attacking fire only knocks out enemy artillery or gives modifiers to combat), a botched attack that faces a lot of artillery can literally destroy an entire division/corps in one blow and with defenders getting their artillery back, it can often be a fatal blow.

Although the objective system is balanced against reinforcements received by either side, there's no morale collapse like in NT. This can lead to weird scenarios in which the Union fight to retain objectives which have ended up in relatively silly places: the field in front of the Angle or the Peach Orchard, which for some reason HAVE TO BE TAKEN BACK even though there's a nice safe defensible ridge behind them.

Lastly, as stated at the start of this review, the rule book can be difficult to digest and there are some rules which are very, very easy to miss in the first playthroughs. However, anyone with even a passing familiarity of NT should be able to understand them relatively easily especially since some of the systems (especially the one for combat) are much easier than the relevant system in NT.

Even when taking in consideration the minor niggles above (which to me are minor, thanks to the immeasurable bias that I have towards this game), the game does one thing well: reproduce if not the actual battle of Gettysburg itself, but the feeling and 'quiddity' of the battle. General Orders, the qualitative dominance of the Confederates, the numerical dominance of the Union, the uncertainty of the reinforcement schedule, the flanking line battles, the desperate charges, the killing fields created by artillery placed on ridges, the restrictions created by rough terrain, they are all elements which add up to a surprisingly realistic simulation of a civil war battle.

This game doesn't reproduce THE Battle of Gettysburg, but it reproduces a possible battle, one coloured by chance and by your own choices. Maybe this is the time when the Union managed to hold the field North-West of Gettysburg! The possibilities are end-less and they are not tied down by a strict adherence to history. This is something that would seem sacrosanct to a wargamer and history fanatic but in this case, it doesn't matter. This is what exploring alt-history should feel like and in this alone, the game delivers.

I cannot overstate how happy the mere existence of this game makes me. Although mechanistically I feel the game is weaker than NT, it does not seem to matter since all of the rules contribute so much in creating such a unique feel within the game. And although in good conscience I cannot rate it as highly as NT, the era depicted in Guns of Gettysburg is of such interest to me that I cannot help but be naturally biased into liking it more. In terms of my chief interest in boardgames, that of visual storylines, both game deliver in abundance, with the battle lines of Gettysburg eerily reminiscent of many of the battle maps present within the ACW books that I've read.

It is impossible for me to truly be objective about this game. Maybe if the issues with this game were larger and more obvious, then maybe I would not rate it as highly, but they seem so minor to me that they are completely negligible. It's even difficult for me to end this review, as I love this game so much, but I am filled with the fear that maybe the words of praise are only said due to my own inherent bias towards the game and era. Maybe my score, which is 9 scowling King Philips out of 10, reflects this bias, but I really hope this will not be the case when you finally get a chance to play the game and thus confirm how wonderful this game is.